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About This Person

From All Movie Guide: A director whose quick-witted and full-blooded approach to genre filmmaking has won him both mainstream success and a cult following, John Carpenter was born in Carthage, NY, in 1948. When he was young, his family moved to Bowling Green, KY, where his father served on the music faculty of Western Kentucky University. As a child, Carpenter became fascinated with such '50s science fiction and horror films as Forbidden Planet and The Thing (From Another World), as well as the classic Westerns of John Ford and Howard Hawks; he began shooting his own 8 mm films -- mostly monster movie pastiches -- in his spare time. After graduating from high school, Carpenter attended Western Kentucky, and later transferred to the University of Southern California to study filmmaking. There, he co-wrote a student film called The Resurrection of Bronco Billy which, in 1971, won an Oscar for Best Live Action Short.